Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.' The locally shot film earned 13 Oscar nominations Thursday, more than any other film this year.

On a record-setting day for the local movie industry, the locally shot fantasy-epic "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" -- director David Fincher's self-described "love poem to New Orleans" -- led the field of Oscar hopefuls Thursday, earning a pace-setting 13 nominations as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the finalists for its 2009 awards.

Also earning a nomination, in the Best Feature Documentary category, was the local film "Trouble the Water," which followed former Lower 9th Ward residents Kimberly Rivers Roberts and Scott Roberts through their post-Katrina journey, painting a portrait of governmental ineptitude along the way.

In a traditionally low-key, early-morning ceremony presided over by Academy President Sid Ganis and Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker, the big-budget "Benjamin Button" staked its claim in four of the six major categories: Best Picture, Best Director (for Fincher), Best Lead Actor (for Brad Pitt) and Best Supporting Actress (for Taraji P. Henson).

"'Benjamin Button' was truly a labor of love, and I am humbled by the nomination," Fincher said in a statement. "On behalf of the producers, cast and crew, I'd like to thank the Academy, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. and most of all the city of New Orleans, who gave birth to 'Benjamin.' "

Kimberly Rivers Roberts and Scott Roberts will be in L.A. for the Oscars in Febrary. The documentary about their Katrina story, 'Trouble the Watr,' was nominated in the Documentary Feature category.

The film's 13 nods -- one short of the record of 14, shared by two films ("All About Eve" and "Titanic") -- represent the most ever for a locally shot film. With them, Fincher's dreamy modern-day fairy tale, about a man who is born an octogenarian and ages backwards as the years tick by, becomes an instant front-runner for best picture.

Its competition in that category: "Frost/Nixon," "Milk," "The Reader" and "Slumdog Millionaire."

The inclusion of "Trouble the Water," directed by Carl Deal and Tia Lessen, only deepened the city's influence on the awards. One of the film's stars, Kimberly Rivers Roberts, said she plans to represent the Crescent City on the red carpet during the Oscar ceremony Feb. 22.

"I'm just so excited," Roberts said, reached at her New Orleans home Thursday afternoon. "I just feel like my life is a whirlwind. But I just want to say I'm not the only the surivor in the city -- mine just was the one that was caught on film."

"Trouble the Water" will go up against "The Betrayal (Nerakhoon)," "Encounters at the End of the World," "The Garden" and "Man on Wire" in the Best Documentary Feature category.

As always, the nominations brought a handful of surprises. Some were notable for who was snubbed (Cate Blanchett, for her performance in "Benjamin Button"; Kate Winslet, for her Golden Globe-winning turn in "The Reader"; Bruce Springsteen, for his Globe-winning song for "The Wrestler"), and others for who was embraced (Robert Downey Jr., for his supporting role in the comedy "Tropic Thunder.")

At least one nomination should come as a surprise to no one: the Supporting Actor nod for Heath Ledger, who played The Joker in the crowd-pleasing action film "The Dark Knight." With the nomination, Ledger becomes the seventh actor to be nominated for an Oscar posthumously. (Peter Finch was the only posthumous winner, for 1976's "Network.")

It was one of the surprisingly few non-technical nominations for the crowd-pleasing "Dark Knight," which some had been predicting as a potential nominee for Best Picture and Best Director.

"Thirteen nominations! I was so pumped when I heard that," said local actor Lance E. Nichols, who has a scene-stealing role in "Benjamin Button" as a healing preacher. "It's really a validation of the work of the local film industry, and I hope we get more big films because of it."

Anne Hathaway and Jonathan Demme are interviewed on the red carpet at New Orleans' Canal Place Theater in October during a local screening of 'Rachel Getting Married.' Hathaway was nominated for an Oscar on Thursday for her performance in the film.

"We always say the production value of projects created here in New Orleans is very high. This is proof. Thirteen nominations is ridiculous," she said. "So many of us were thrilled with the way the movie turned out, and these nominations just solidify that -- not just people in Louisiana thought this was an amazing movie, but industry people are taking note."

The film, based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, was re-set from its original Baltimore to New Orleans largely because of Louisiana's filmmaking tax-incentives program. Under the guidance of Fincher and screenwriter Eric Roth, New Orleans became more than a backdrop for the film. It became a character.

In addition to including a handful of local flourishes -- streetcars, Sazeracs, Spanish moss -- Roth added a Hurricane Katrina bookend structure to his script that played seamlessly into the film's main theme of the temporal nature of life.

Other nominations in which locals might find a rooting interest include:

• Anne Hathaway's nomination for Best Lead Actress in the drama "Rachel Getting Married." That film was directed by friend of New Orleans Jonathan Demme and includes a number of local residents in minor roles. Hathaway and Demme attended a red-carpet screening of the film in New Orleans in October.

• Part-time French Quarter resident Angelina Jolie's nomination in the same category, for her performance in "Changeling." Jolie's nomination raises the possibility that she and parenting partner Pitt -- a fellow nominee -- could bring home a shiny new set of twins on Oscar night.

Even the nominations ceremony had notable local connections: Whitaker is a Hollywood South veteran, with the Shreveport-shot "The Great Debaters" and the New Orleans-shot "Hurricane Season" and "My Own Love Song" on his resume. (Two more potential local projects are also on tap for the action: "The Expendables" and "What a Wonderful World").

The 81st annual Academy Awards will be handed out Feb. 22 at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles. The awards telecast will begin at 7 p.m. on ABC-TV.